Limitations of IIS Migration Tool

Limitations of IIS 6.0 Migration Tool

The Internet Information Services 6.0 Migration Tool (IISMT) is a free command-line utility from Microsoft that allows administrators to automate the migration of a Web site, or a Web application, from IIS 4.0/5.0/6.0 to an IIS 6.0 running on Windows Server 2003. Click here to download this tool.

IISMT version 1.0 was part of IIS 6.0 Resource Kit Tools. The newer IIS 6.0 Migration Tool version 1.1 is now available from Microsoft. Although IISMT version 1.1 fixes several bugs in the older IISMT version 1.0, there are still several known limitations in the newer version.

Bug Fixes in IISMT 6.0 Version 1.1
Here's a list of bug fixes in the newer version.

IIS Couldn't Spawn New Worker Processes During a Migration
In the older version 1.0, if you were to perform a migration on a production IIS server, the existing sites didn't function properly until the migration was complete. The newer version 1.1 fixes this problem and will not lock the metabase.

Permissions of the AdminACL for the W3SVC/<siteID> in IIS 6.0 Metabase Were Incorrect After Migration
In the previous version, the AdminACL wasn't correctly migrated for the W3SVC/<siteID>, which tend to break the Web applications on the target server. When browsing the migrated ASP.NET application, users could get errors such as "500 Internal Server Error", or "Server Application is Unavailable". The new version fixes this problem.

Migration Tool Didn't Migrate Nested Applications Correctly
IISMT version 1.0 didn't migrate nested applications correctly. The AppRoot metabase key was migrated as (/LM/W3SVC/<ID of site on source>/Root/....) instead of (/LM/W3SVC/<ID of site on Target>/Root/....) which essentially broke the Web applications. When browsing the migrated ASP.NET application, users could get errors such as "500 Internal Server Error", or "Server Application is Unavailable". The new version addresses this problem.

Known Limitations in Both Versions
Both IISMT versions 1.0 and 1.1 have several known limitations. Here's a list of those known limitations.

• You cannot migrate the entire server. You must migrate one site at a time. Needless to say, you should try and script as many migration items as possible, especially if you are working in larger enterprises.

• If you plan to migrate from IIS 4.0 on NT4 running FPSE 98, you should upgrade your server extensions on the source server to either FPSE 2000 or FPSE 2002 because if you migrate with /FPSE switch, your server extensions are not likely to work properly on IIS 6.0.

• If the files are located on the source server in a directory structure that exceeds MAX_PATH, the file will not be migrated. IISMT will stop the migration and you'll see an "Access Denied" error.

• You can't run IISMT a second time on the same site if the administrators don't have full control permissions on the source server content, or else you'll get an "Access Denied" error. To workaround this problem, you can either give the administrators group full control on the content on the source server, or make sure you delete the content on the destination server before running IISMT a second time.